18.04 LTS - the newest version of the most widely used Linux for
workstations, cloud and IoT, is now available.

"Multi-cloud operations
are the new normal," said
Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical and founder of Ubuntu. "Boot-time and performance-optimized images of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on every major public cloud
make it the fastest and most efficient OS for cloud computing, especially for storage and compute intensive tasks like machine learning."

Kubeflow, the Google
approach to TensorFlow on Kubernetes, and a range
of CI/CD tools are integrated in Canonical Kubernetes and aligned with Google
GKE for on-premise and on-cloud AI development.

"Having an OS that is
tuned for advanced workloads such as AI and ML is critical to a high velocity
team" said David Aronchick, Product Manager, Cloud AI at Google. "With the
release of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Canonical's collaborations to the Kubeflow
project, Canonical has provided both a familiar and highly performant operating
system that works everywhere. Whether on-premise or in the cloud, software
engineers and data scientists can use tools they are already familiar with,
such as Ubuntu, Kubernetes and Kubeflow, and greatly accelerate their ability
to deliver value for their customers."

Canonical OpenStack delivers private cloud with significant savings over VMware and
provides a modern, developer-friendly API. With built-in support for NFV and
NVIDIA Tesla GPUs as well as other GPUs, the Canonical OpenStack offering has
become a reference cloud for digital transformation workloads. Today, Ubuntu is
at the heart of the world's largest OpenStack clouds, both public and private,
in key sectors such as finance, media, retail and telecommunications.

Kubernetes

Canonical's Distribution
of Kubernetes
(CDK) runs on public clouds, VMware, OpenStack, and bare metal and delivers the
latest upstream version, currently Kubernetes 1.10. After the initial
three-step guided deployment, the distribution supports upgrades to future
versions of Kubernetes, expansion of the Kubernetes cluster on demand, and
integration with optional components for storage, networking and monitoring. A
range of partners deliver their solutions on CDK, such as Rancher 2.0.

Platform for AI and
machine learning

CDK supports GPU
acceleration of workloads using the NVIDIA device plugin for Kubernetes.
Complex workloads like Kubeflow that leverage NVIDIA GPUs ‘just work' on CDK,
reflecting joint efforts with Google to accelerate machine learning in the
enterprise and providing a portable way to develop and deploy ML applications
at scale. Applications built and tested with Kubeflow and CDK are perfectly
transportable to Google Cloud.

Developers on Ubuntu can
create applications on their workstations, test them on private bare-metal
Kubernetes with CDK, and run them across vast data sets on Google's GKE. The
resulting models and inference engines can be delivered to Ubuntu devices at
the edge of the network, creating a perfect pipeline for machine learning from
workstation, to rack, to cloud and device.

Containers for legacy
workloads with LXD 3.0

LXD 3.0 enables ‘lift-and-shift' of legacy workloads into containers
for performance and density, an essential part of the enterprise container
strategy. While new applications will be built with containers and Kubernetes
in mind, the long tail of legacy applications represents the most immediate
benefit for data center operators interested in containers.

LXD provides ‘machine
containers', which behave like virtual machines in that they contain a full and
mutable Linux guest operating system such as Ubuntu, RHEL or CentOS. That
provides a traditional administration environment for legacy applications,
which run at bare metal speeds with no hypervisor latency. Customers using
unsupported or end-of-life Linux environments that have not received fixes for
critical issues like Meltdown and Spectre can lift and shift those workloads
into LXD on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with all the latest kernel security fixes.

Acceleration of snaps,
deployed across desktop to the cloud

With more than 3,000 snaps
published and millions installed, including official releases from Spotify, Skype, Slack and Firefox, snaps have become a
popular way to get apps on Linux. Snaps are fully integrated in Ubuntu GNOME
18.04 LTS and KDE Neon. Publishers deliver updates directly and security is
maintained with enhanced kernel isolation and system service mediation.

"Snaps provide a
platform for us to deliver our CLI reliably" said Jeff Dickey, CLI Engineer,
Heroku. "The automatic updates ensure our users are always using the latest
version which saves us a big support headache. We're very happy to see snaps
supported on more and more Linux distributions and becoming the standard for
delivering software across Linux."

Snaps work on desktops,
devices, cloud virtual machines and bare-metal servers, providing a consistent
delivery mechanism for applications and frameworks. Having an identical
platform from workstation to edge and cloud accelerates global deployments and
operations. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS features a default GNOME desktop in a family of
desktop flavors including KDE, MATE and Budgie.

Ultra fast Ubuntu on your
Windows desktop

New Hyper-V optimized images
developed in collaboration with Microsoft enhance the virtual machine
experience of Ubuntu in Windows. "In our upcoming OS release this spring,
Hyper-V's Quick Create VM Gallery will now include an image for the latest
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, officially stamped straight from Canonical" said Craig
Wilhite, Program Manager, Microsoft. "This Ubuntu VM image will come
pre-configured to offer clipboard functionality, drive redirection, dynamic
resizing of VM console window, and much more as we look to provide a great
Hyper-V client VM experience for Linux on Windows."

Minimal desktop install

The popular new minimal
desktop install provides only the core desktop and browser for those looking to
save disk space and customize machines with their specific apps or
requirements. In corporate environments, the minimal desktop serves as a base
for custom desktop images, reducing the security cross-section of the platform.

"Canonical and IBM
have been working closely together to offer cloud solutions with Ubuntu on IBM
LinuxONE and IBM Z. With today's announcement of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS running on
IBM LinuxONE and IBM Z with pervasive encryption, customers and service
providers will be able to scale-up their containerized applications, manage
them more easily with Kubernetes, and better protect them from external and
internal attacks." -- Michael Desens, Vice President, Offering Management, IBM Z and
LinuxONE, IBM

"Snaps enables us to
access more Linux users and opens the market for us to accommodate more
distributions. This was our biggest driver to build a Skype snap as it reduces
the complexity and time of maintaining several packages across multiple
distributions. In addition to that, we want our users to consistently
experience the latest and greatest version of Skype and the automatic update
feature allows us to seamlessly deliver this to them. It's such a promising
format and an asset for developers to help create unification." -- Jonáš Tajrych, Senior
Software Engineer at Skype, Microsoft

"AI and IoT systems cannot
be effectively implemented without an open computing platform that supports
software agility and device diversity. We expect that the new version of Ubuntu
will play this role and accelerate AI and IoT innovations" -- Masahisa Kawashima, VP,
Head of Software Innovation Center, NTT

"Organizations are
increasingly looking to accelerate their deep learning and AI implementations.
In addition to using Ubuntu on our DGX systems, we have been working with
Canonical to offer Kubernetes on NVIDIA GPUs as a scalable and portable
solution for multi-cloud deep learning training and inference workloads." -- Duncan Poole, Director of
Platform Alliances at NVIDIA

"Canonical is a pioneer in
enabling the adoption of infrastructure for optimized cloud workloads. The
latest release of Ubuntu with OpenStack and Kubernetes is another significant
step in strengthening the ecosystem which will enable compute for trillions of
Arm-based devices at the edge and greater performance-per-watt in the
datacenter." -- Drew Henry, Senior Vice
President and General Manager, Infrastructure Business Unit, Arm

"IBM and Canonical
continue to collaborate to rapidly deliver innovation to clients transforming
their business to cloud and data rich workloads. The release of Ubuntu 18.04
LTS supporting IBM Power Systems based on POWER9 brings choice and new
capabilities to the Linux market." -- Stefanie Chiras, Vice
President, Offering Management, IBM Cognitive Systems

"Canonical's release of
Ubuntu 18.04 delivers the key operating system, tools and application support
that Cavium's ThunderX2 end users require across Cloud and HPC deployments.
Canonical has aggressively optimized Ubuntu to take advantage of ThunderX2's
high computational performance delivering outstanding memory bandwidth and memory
capacity with multiple workload optimized SKUs for both scale up and
scale out applications in single and dual socket configurations. Today's
announcement is another exciting milestone in our partnership with the
Canonical team and highlights the innovation we continue to deliver to the
server market." -- Larry Wikelius, Vice
President Software Ecosystem and Solutions Group at Cavium.